Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environments by Graham Attwell, John Cook, Andrew Ravenscroft

8/14/2019 Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environments by Graham Attwell, J

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Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge:

Mobile Personal Learning Environments

Graham Attwell1, John Cook2, Andrew Ravenscroft3

1 Pontydysgu, Pontypridd, Wales, UK, [email protected] Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, UK,

[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract: The development of Technology Enhanced Learning has beendominated by the education paradigm. However social software and new forms

of knowledge development and collaborative meaning making are challenging

such domination. Technology is increasingly being used to mediate the

development of work process knowledge and these processes are leading to the

evolution of rhizomatic forms of community based knowledge development.

Technologies can support different forms of contextual knowledge development

through Personal Learning Environments. The appropriation or shaping of

technologies to develop Personal Learning Environments may be seen as an

outcome of learning in itself. Mobile devices have the potential to support

situated and context based learning, as exemplified in projects undertaken at

London Metropolitan University. This work provides the basis for the

development of a Work Orientated MoBile Learning Environment

(WOMBLE).

Keywords: technology enhanced learning, mobile learning, media, context-

aware, personal learning environment,

1 Introduction

The development and implementation of Technology Enhanced Learning has not

been unproblematic. Despite optimistic industry predictions and sustained

governmental support, instances of effective practice in using technology for learning

often remain isolated, and initiatives fail to prove sustainable with one generation of

technology replacing another and one project following on another in rapidsuccession.

The reasons put forward for this are numerous poor interface design, the failures

to adapt appropriate pedagogic approaches, the lack of confidence of teachers an

trainers with new technologies, the digital divide and the lack of digital literacies

often being cited.

However the difficulties and challenges of new technologies for learning may lay

deeper, resting in the relations of technologies and media to learning and knowledge
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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development within societies and to the organisation and purposes of institutions and

education systems.

It may not be going too far to say that the rapid development and use of new

internet based technologies and media, particularly social software and the read-write

web are challenging the present structures and purpose of educational institutions

with learning increasingly taking place outside formal pedagogic structures. Equally

the use of social media for information exchange, social networking and knowledge

development challenges the relevance of traditional purpose-built education

technology and the idea of instructional design.

Given the above context, in this paper we explore the development of a Work

Oriented Mobile MoBile Learning Environment, with a view to enabling us to

overcome a number of contradictions and dilemmas in the development of technology

for learning

2 The education paradigm and technology development

it has been suggested [1] suggested that the adoption of educational technology and

instructional design has been shaped by the educational paradigm. Thus successive

waves of technology have been developed to support the management of existing

schooling systems with the development of Virtual Management Systems and

Management Information Systems. Even in the pedagogic sphere the development of

virtual classrooms has tended towards supporting and even reinforcing traditional

pedagogic approaches and teacher-learner relationships albeit whilst extending the

potential for access to classroom based education. It is little surprise that the leading

commercial educational technology platform is named Blackboard.

The adoption and effective use of any innovation is not solely a function of the

affordances of new tools [2-4]. Innovation is socially constructed and constrained by

the social context and the individuals who are offered opportunity to use the

innovation [5]. In seeking to explain the relationships between learning and

technology and the social construction and context of educational innovation it is

necessary to explore further the relationship between the educational paradigms and

other social and economic paradigms.

The potential for shaping of new technologies of learning may be more easily

understood in the changes in economies and wider social structures and in particular

in the ways in which technology is being used outside education than at looking at

technology form within the educational paradigm.

2. 1. The industrial model of schooling

The present industrial model of schooling evolved to meet the needs and forms of

a particular phase of industrial development [1].


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The industrial revolution imposed new requirements in terms of skills and

knowledge in particular the need to extend general education to wider layers of

society. In 1893 the Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act raised the school

leaving age to 11 and in 1902 the state took over education, through the organisation

of Local Education Authorities and the provision of funding for schools from

taxation. These reforms were based on a perceived need for Britain to remain

competitive in the world by being at the forefront of manufacture and improvement.

The form of organisation of schooling and the predominant pedagogy were based on

the forms of production developed through the industrial revolution. Schools

resembled large scale factories for knowledge [6].

The curriculum was closely tied to the needs of industry. In the early years of the

19th century the major emphasis was on basic skills and literacy. In 1872 a Revised

code of Regulations laid down six levels of standards for reading, writing andarithmetic.

Despite a series of reforms throughout the 20 th Century, the paradigmatic forms of

organisation and delivery of education, the institutional form of schooling, the

development of curriculum and approaches to pedagogy continue to be based on the

Taylorist organisation of production stemming from the industrial revolution and

from the economic and social needs of society to reproduce the workforce.

Of course there are different interpretations of the rise of the schooling system.

Whilst acknowledging the importance of how social, technological, economic, and

political forces influenced the evolution of schools, Arenas [7] explores the

epistemological origin of schools. Arenas refers to the artificial and ritualistic nature

of classroom learning coupled by a virtual monopoly of book and abstract/fragmented

knowledge. Children had been given the role of students and had to learn the

necessary skills and behaviors to become honorable citizens and, eventually, also

effective workers in the emerging industrial-bureaucratic world.

2. 2 Education, media and technology

Friesen and Hug [8] argues that the practices and institutions of education need to

be understood in a frame of reference that is mediatic: as a part of a media-

ecological configuration of technologies specific to a particular age or era. This

configuration, they say, is one in which print has been dominant. They quote

McLuhan [9] who has described the role of the school specifically as the custodian

of print culture (1962). It provides, he says, a socially sanctioned civil defense

against media fallout [10] against threatening changes in the mediatic environs.Neil Postman [11] says that school was an invention of the printing press and

must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word will have in

the future. Schooling and education, by extension, appear as the formal setting that is

the necessary institutional correlative to this conception of development. As the

custodian of print culture, it is the task of education to provide students with a

structured, controlled environment that is conducive to the quiet repose that print

media demand of their audiences. This further positions the school as a kind of


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separate, reflective, critical pedagogical space, isolated from the multiple sources of

informational noise in an otherwise media-saturated lifeworld.

However Friesen and Hug [8] consider that: any simple binary opposition

between logical, hierarchical print culture on the one hand, and the visceral visual and

audio flows on the other, has seriously undermined by the eclectic mix of media

available via the internet, Web, and mobile communications. This is illustrated with

special clarity in the case of textual forms of communication that have been

collectively labeled Web 2.0 or the read-write Web.... Education, fighting on the

side of literacy, no longer needs to fend off the attacks of mass media on the one

hand while wielding instructional media from its curricular arsenal on the other.

Instead of working against media and insulating its use of media against the mass

mediatic environment, education now has the opportunity of working with media, in

greater consonance with the larger mediatic ecology.Thus the opportunities and challenges posed for the development of Technology

Enhanced Learning may be seen in moving beyond the industrial model of schooling

and the artificial and ritualistic nature of classroom learning to embracing new forms

of learning based on a wider mediatic ecology, with learning embedded in forms of

media and mediated experience outside the classroom paradigm.

2.3 Social learning and knowledge development

However it is not only the social form of the classroom and the media which have

defined educational practices and are being challenged by social media based on new

technologies. It is also the nature and content of the curricula. Cormier [12] has

written that the present speed of information based on new technologies has

undermined traditional expert driven processes of knowledge development and

dissemination. The explosion of freely available sources of information has helped

drive rapid expansion in the accessibility of the canon and in the range of knowledge

available to learners. We are being forced to reexamine what constitutes knowledge

and are moving from expert developed and sanctioned knowledge to collaborative

forms of knowledge construction. Social learning practices are leading to new forms

of knowledge discovery. Social learning is the practice of working in groups, not

only to explore an established canon but also to negotiate what qualifies as

knowledge. Cormier [12] cites Brown and Adler [13] who say: "The most profound

impact of the Internet, an impact that has yet to be fully realized, is its ability to

support and expand the various aspects of social learning." Ravenscroft [14] has

argued that one of the reasons why this hasnt happened is due to the conceptualmisalignment of (old) pedagogy and (new) communicative practices. He has pointed

out that, typically, educationalists attempt to shoe-horn the radical possibilities

offered by social software into, relatively, traditional pedagogical approaches, which

unsurprisingly gives rise to mixed results and limited success. He argues that instead,

we need to embrace new and emerging literacies through devising new, and typically

more ambient pedagogies [15] that embrace the new possibilities for engaging

social learning and highly communicative interaction. Along these lines, some new


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pedagogical approaches to learning through dialogue have been proposed [16], that

have also been realized and tested through the development and deployment of

dialogue game technologies that have been used with hundreds of users. Crucial to

these approaches is the setting up of a dialogic space [17] that reconciles new

linguistic forms, such as instant messaging and immediate textual communication

with tested pedagogical frameworks (e.g. for reflective thinking and reasoned

discussion). So, this sort of technology provides affordances and structure that can be

deployed in various, different and evolving ways, and so can harmonise with what

Cormier [12] proposes a rhizomatic model of learning in which a community can

construct a model of education flexible enough for the way knowledge develops and

changes today by producing a map of contextual knowledge.

2.4 Using social software for learning

The central point of our argument is that educational technology has been

developed within a particular educational paradigm to support the diffusion of expert

based knowledge. Tools have been designed to support particular forms of knowledge

within the particular environment of instructional design in school settings. Given the

domination of universities and schools as the context for the implementation of

educational technology, the focus has been on academic and disciplinary knowledge.

It is particularly important to note that the forms of technology and the media have

been separated from the contents or subjects of learning. Knowledge has been

embedded within the idea of learning objects, to be consumed through technology

players, thus separating technology from content and process. Within the formaleducational institutions, social practices have been limited to a critique (at best) of an

established canon of disciplinary knowledge, within groups defined by age and

relation to progression within that canon (and by extension by class and gender etc.).

However outside the classroom social software is increasingly being expropriated

for learning. Young people are increasingly using technology for creating and sharing

multi media objects and for social networking. A Pew Research study [18] found that

56 per cent of young people in America were using computers for creative activities,

writing and posting of the internet, mixing and constructing multimedia and

developing their own content. Twelve to 17-year-olds look to web tools to share what

they think and do online. One in five who use the net said they used other people's

images, audio or text to help make their own creations. According to Raine [19],

"These teens were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create,

consume, remix, and share material with each other and lots of strangers."But it is not just young people who are using social media. A survey into the use of

technology for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises found few instances of the

use of formal educational technologies [20]. But the study found the widespread

everyday use of internet technologies for informal learning, utilizing a wide range of

business and social software applications. This finding is confirmed by a recent study

on the adoption of social networking in the workplace and Enterprise 2.0 [21]. The

study found almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks


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had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues.

63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that

they hadnt been able to do before

Of course such studies beg the question of the nature and purpose of the use of

social software in the workplace. The findings of the ICT and SME project, which

was based on 106 case studies in six European countries focused on the use of

technologies for informal learning. The study suggested that although social software

was used for information seeking and for social and communication purposes it was

also being widely used for informal learning. In such a context:

Learning takes place in response to problems or issues or is driven by the

interests of the learner

Learning is sequenced by the learner

Learning is episodic

Learning is controlled by the learner in terms of pace and time

Learning is heavily contextual in terms of time, place and use

Learning is cross disciplinary or cross subject

Learning is interactive with practice

Learning builds on often idiosyncratic and personal knowledge bases

Learning takes place in communities of practice

However, it is important to note that the technology was not being used for formal

learning, nor in the most part was it for following a traditionally curriculum or

academic body of knowledge. Instead business applications and social and

networking software were being used to develop what has been described as Work

Process Knowledge [22]. The concept of Work Process Knowledge emphasises the

relevance of practice in the workplace and is related to concepts of competence and

qualification that stress the idea that learning processes not only include cognitive, but

also affective, personal and social factors. They include the relevance of such non-

cognitive and affective-social factors for the acquisition and use of work process

knowledge in practical action. Work often takes place, and is carried out, in different

circumstances and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary for the individual to acquire

and demonstrate a certain capacity to reflect and act on the task (system) and the

wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape it. Such competence is

captured in the notion of developmental competence [23] and includesthe idea of

social shaping of work and technology as a principle of vocational education and

training [24]. Work process knowledge embraces developmental competence, the

developmental perspective emphasising that individuals have the capacity to reflect

and act upon the environment and thereby forming or shaping it.In using technologies to develop such work process knowledge, individuals are

also shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different

purposes, for social learning.


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mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to

novices Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the

explosion of new mediatechnologies that make it possible for average consumers to

archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways.

The specific skills that Jenkins and his coauthors describe as arising through

involvement of average consumers in this participatory culture include ludic

forms of problem solving, identity construction, multitasking, distributed cognition,

and transmedial navigation.

Importantly modern mobile devices can easily be user customized, including the

appearance, operation and applications. Wild, Mdritscher and Sigurdarson [32]

suggest that establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts,

and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the

learning outcomes, not an instructional condition. They go on to say: Consideringthe learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning,

moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform

which is personalisable or customisable by learners (easy to use) and heading

towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and

an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process

freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (easy to

develop).

Critically, mobile devices can facilitate the recognition of context as a key factor in

work related and social learning processes. Cook [33] proposes that new digital

media can be regarded as cultural resources for learning and can enable the bringing

together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution with

those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions.He suggests that informal learning in social networks is not enabling the critical,

creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.

Instead he argues for the scaffolding of learning in a new context for learning

through learning activities that take place outside formal institutions and on platforms

that are selected by learners.

Cook [30] describes two experimental learning activities for mobile devices

developed through projects at London Metropolitan University. In the first, targeted at

trainee teachers an urban area close to London Metropolitan University, from 1850 to

the present day, is being used to explore how schools are signifiers of both urban

change and continuity of educational policy and practice.

The aim of this project is to provide a contextualised, social and historical account

of urban education, focusing on systems and beliefs that contribute to the construction

of the surrounding discourses. A second aim is to scaffold the trainee teachers

understanding of what is possible with mobile learning in terms of field trips. In an

evaluation of the project, 91% of participants thought the mobile device enhanced the

learning experience. Furthermore, they considered the information easy to assimilate

allowing more time to concentrate on tasks and said the application allowed instant

reflection in situ and promoted active learning through triggering their own

thoughts and encouraging them to think more about the area


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In the second project, archaeology students were provided with a tour of context

aware objects triggered by different artifacts in the remains of a Cistercian abbey in

Yorkshire. The objects allowed learners to expire not only the physical entity of the

reconstructed abbey through the virtual representation, but also to examine different

aspects including social and cultural history and the construction methods deployed.

According to Cook [30] the gap between physical world (what is left of Cistercian),

virtual world on mobile is inhabited by the shared cognition of the students for deep

learning.

The use of the mobile technology allowed the development and exploration of

boundary objects transcending the physical and virtual worlds. Boundary objects have

been defined as objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and

constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a

common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, andbecome strongly structured in individual-site use. They may be abstract or concrete.

They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common

enough to more than one world to make them recognizable means of translation. The

creation and management of boundary objects is key in developing and maintaining

coherence across intersecting social worlds. [33]. The creation and management of

boundary objects which can be explored through mobile devices can allow the

interlinking of formal and academic knowledge to practical and work process

knowledge.

Practically, if we consider models for personalized and highly communicative

learning interaction in concert with mobile devices, whilst employing context aware

techniques, startling possibilities can arise. For example, we can combine the

immediacy of mobile interaction with an emergent need for a collaborative problemsolving dialogue, in vivo, during everyday working practices, where the contextual

dimensions can constrain and structure (through semantic operations) the choices

about a suitable problem solving partner or the type of contextualised knowledge that

will support the problem solving. In brief, combining dialogue design, social software

techniques, mobility and context sensitivity means we have greater opportunities for

learning rich dialogues in situations where they are needed - to address concrete and

emergent problems or opportunities at work.

Such approaches to work oriented mobile learning also supports Levi Strausss

idea of bricolage [34]. The concept of bricolage refers to the rearrangement and

juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings

in fresh contexts. Bricolage involves a process of resignification by which cultural

signs with established meanings are re-organised into new codes of meaning. In such

a pedagogic approach the task of educators is to help co-shape the learning

environment.

Of course, such approaches are possible using social software on desktop and lap

top computers. The key to the mobile environment is in facilitating the use of context.

This is particularly important as traditional elearning, focused on academic learning,

has failed to support the context based learning inherent in informal and work based

environments.


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Whilst the use of context is limited in the experiments undertaken by London

Metropolitan University, being mainly based on location specific and temporal

factors, it is not difficult to imagine that applications could be developed which seek

to build on wider contextual factors. These might include tasks being undertaken, the

nature of any given social network, competences being deployed, individual learner

preferences and identities and of course the semantic relation involved.

4. Conclusions

The development of a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment is seen as

potentially allowing us to overcome a number of contradictions and dilemmas in thedevelopment of technology for learning as outlined in the first part of this paper.

These include:

Classroom learning versus real life informal or work based learning

Academic knowledge as opposed to work process knowledge

Individual learning versus social learning

Educational technology versus social software

Decontextualised knowledge acquisition versus context knowledge

development

Information acquisition versus reflective learning

At the same time the Work Oriented MoBile Learning environment can be

developed by learners themselves through the appropriation or shaping of

technologies, thus allowing learners to co-design their own learning environmentsthrough the process of learning.

The technologies to develop such environments exist. The challenge is to further

explore the nature of context and to co-develop or appropriate with learners,

applications which can facilitate such social learning processes. At the same time

though the process of interacting with the wider environment learners themselves can

construct and shape the corpus of knowledge itself within the community.

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Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environments by Graham Attwell, John Cook, Andrew Ravenscroft